Steel City Readers: Reading for Pleasure in Sheffield, 1925-1955 [Paperback]

Steel City Readersdraws on a large body of new evidence about reading for pleasure in 1930s and 1940s Britain. Grounded in place, and particularly in the context of a specific industrial city, its distinctive method is to listen to readers' own voices, rather than theorising about them as an undifferentiated group.An Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and the OAPEN library.

Steel City Readersmakes available, and interprets in detail, a large body of new evidence about past cultures and communities of reading. Its distinctive method is to listen to readers' own voices, rather than theorising about them as an undifferentiated group. Its cogent and engaging structure traces reading journeys from childhood into education and adulthood, and attends to settings from home to school to library. It has a distinctive focus on reading for pleasure and its framework of argument situates that type of reading in relation to dimensions of gender and class. It is grounded in place, and particularly in the context of a specific industrial city: Sheffield. The men and women featured in the book, coming to adulthood in the 1930s and 1940s, rarely regarded reading as a means of self-improvement. It was more usually a compulsive and intensely pleasurable private activity.Introduction: Reading, 'I saw no living in it'

1. At Home with Books

2. Running up Eyre Street: Independent Young Readers and the Public Libraries

3. Hefty Books and Tuppenny Weeklies

4. Reading Scenes: Cultural Networks and Reading

5. 'Getting them Learned': Books in the Classroom

6. The 1937 'Confession' Book of Mary Wilkinson: Reading and the Second World War

7. 'You can read and dance': Marriage, Work and Play

8. 'Anna Karenina, you know, and all the normal things': Sheffield Readers, Classics and the Contemporary

The Last Word Steel City Readers provides an exlc1